Nicknamed the eye of Paris by Henry Miller, the US author, Brassaï was a millenial of the XX-th century born in Brasso/Brasov.
Brassaï the artist took his nom-de-guerre, not so much a nom-de-plume, ‘from Brasso’. His photographs of Paris in general, not only the nightlife, depict individuals almost at war with each other, even when love is in the air. Tension and dynamism are his trademarks and remain unequalled though countlessly copied by the more ‘talented’ fashion photographer of our day. That is probably because Brassaï speaks of something in a deeper vein than ‘French life as fashion’, and his eye is not vain and self-referential in any regard. Not part of the lost generation but the one after that, decimated by the second world war, Brassaï was left stateless for a long number of years until the French society granted him, and his fame, status as French.